Steel Products Prices North America

June Foreign Steel Import Trend is 3.9 Million Tons

June 27, 2017

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) released Preliminary Census Data on May indicating foreign steel imports totaled 3.6 million net tons. They also released license data for June and we are seeing the trend indicating the month will be close to 3.8 million net tons (license data through the 27th of June).

The numbers for June are even more impressive (alarming if you are a steel mill) when compared to the 2.8 million tons imported one year ago and the 3.1 million tons imported during the “import surge” year of 2014. This month is poised to be the highest import month since February 2015 (prior to AD/CVD suits) when the USA received 4,3993,498 tons.

Finished imports (less semi-finished steels like slabs and billets used by the domestic steel mills) are trending toward 3.0 million net tons after hitting 2,686,359 net tons during the month of May 2017.

All of these are much larger numbers than anticipated for this time of the year. There are troubling signs for OCTG (300,000 tons for June), hot rolled (240,000 tons), cold rolled (260,000 tons), galvanized (300,000 tons), Galvalume (133,000 tons) and coiled plate/CTL plate totaling 225,000 tons.